


Expendable

by INMH



Series: trope-bingo Fanfiction Fills 2017 (2nd Quarter) [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Cannon Fodder, Drama, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 06:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11457873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Cassian meets- and rescues- K-2SO.





	Expendable

It was the posture that caught Cassian’s eye.  
  
In a base full of KX droids, that one in the corner was the only one whose shoulders were hunched so deeply, like a man in the middle of a deep, deep sigh. That one stood out from the others, whose shoulders were stooped, but not nearly as deeply. Was it damaged? Defective? Or had it just been a quirk in the droid’s design?  
  
Cassian, you could say, had a knack for the technical. He could pick locks, hijack ships, and rewire security systems to his preferences; he could also repair and reprogram droids to his satisfaction as well, which was part of the reason why Draven had pulled him over to the more covert side of the Rebellion. People who could do the kind of things to a computer system that Cassian could do in a matter of minutes were very, very helpful to have in the field.  
  
And Cassian wasn’t even nineteen yet.  
  
The plan was formulating even as he was slithering out from behind the boxes he’d been crouching behind. There were something like a hundred droids in the hangar, and all of them were… Not _deactivated_ , that would be less nerve-wracking, but on a sort of stand-by mode that meant their systems were up and running, but not active enough to register a threat- in this case, a skinny teenager creeping behind them.  
  
Cassian reached the odd-duck droid and, after a moment’s hesitation, carefully reached up and popped open the control-panel on its back. The droid didn’t react, and Cassian let out a long sigh of relief; he’d been half-convinced that the thing would try to shoot him when he’d opened the panel. He took a look inside, mentally parsing out which wire (likely) did what and how easy it would be to make some cursory adjustments, just enough to make sure he could get off the base alive. He pulled out a small case from his boot, removed a few tools from it, and started in on the droid.  
  
As he worked, Cassian puzzled over what exactly these droids were meant for- well, combat, obviously, since the Empire really didn’t care about the laws regarding combat droids. But he didn’t know what their immediate purpose was. He’d seen enough to know they were meant to be shipped off to Jedha, where Saw Garrera’s group had been raising hell.  
  
_But these droids aren’t nearly well-equipped enough to take on Saw’s rebels_ , Cassian considered as he reconnected some wiring. _The rebels have the sort of weapons that could cut through them like paper._  
  
Even as he did his work on the droid, Cassian separately ran over everything he’d learned since arriving on base. His entire reason for being there was because he’d been meant to observe and report the enemy’s movement, because they had been moving quite a bit on this base lately.  
  
They were sending a shipment of Stormtroopers and KX droids- more troopers than droids- to Jedha. The droids they were sending weren’t equipped for the sort of combat that they would be encountering from Saw’s rebels, which meant for the most part they would be getting cut down and destroyed-  
  
Ah.  
  
There it was.  
  
The droids, Cassian reasoned, would be sent in first to exhaust the rebel’s supplies and energy, and _then_ the Stormtroopers would be sent in to take out the ones that were left over. Clever.  
  
_Well_ , Cassian thought, wincing as a small spark zapped his finger, _we’ll have to see if we can’t do something about that._ Technically he was only supposed to be observing and reporting, but given the circumstances, it felt necessary to act. Saw Garrera may not have been part of the Rebel Alliance anymore, but he was an enemy of the Empire, and ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and all that.  
  
Now he just needed to get his new ‘friend’ up and running, and Cassian would be able to wreak a little havoc before he took off.  
  
Cassian double and triple-checked his work before closing the panel. Things had gone smoothly enough so far, and he didn’t need things going to hell because he’d accidentally put the wrong wire in the wrong port and turned the droid into a maniacal killing machine. He shut his eyes, prayed that he hadn’t fucked up, and then started the droid’s system again.  
  
He backed away as the droid started moving, twitching slightly. Cassian pulled his blaster from the holster and flicked the safety off, then waited patiently for the droid to come to full awareness. It took about two minutes, and then finally a distinct shudder ripped through the droid’s body, and all of the small, strange, erratic movements stopped. There was a pause, and then it turned around.  
  
The droid looked down at Cassian with its large, circular eyes, which were now bright. Those eyes looked Cassian up and down, probably assessing him for threats. The eyes stuck right at about waist-level, about where Cassian was holding his blaster behind his back.  
  
“You have a loaded blaster in your left hand. I feel like I should be trying to exterminate you right now,” The droid drawled. “But it would seem that that section of my programming has been deactivated. Was that you that did that?”  
  
Cassian nodded warily, pulling the blaster out from behind his back and holding it tightly at his side. “I did, yes.”  
  
“Oh.” A beat. “Are you a Rebel?”  
  
Cassian thought his fatigues spoke for themselves, but he nodded anyway. “I am, yes. Is that a problem?”  
  
“That’s a trick question,” The droid responded promptly. “You reprogrammed me to remove my hostility towards Rebel soldiers.”  
  
“Good answer.” Cassian tentatively holstered his blaster. “Come with me.”  
  
“And why should I do that?”  
  
Maybe Cassian had gone a little too hard on the free will programming. He pointed to the other KX droids. “See them?”  
  
“My ocular receptors are functioning just fine, so yes, I do,” The droid responded, not even bothering to conceal its- _his_ sarcasm.  
  
“Alright, well all of those droids are going to be sent to Jedha and stuck in front of a bunch of angry Rebels to get shot to pieces. Does that bother you?” That was a genuine question. Cassian had reprogrammed the droid to feel a wide range of emotions, and enough free will to decide certain things on his own. But he didn’t know if any of that would be enough to make him care about his fellow KX droids.  
  
The droid rotated his head to look at the other droids, all of which were still in stand-by mode. Cassian was starting to get nervous, because it had been a while since a patrol had passed by and they were probably due to swing in soon.  
  
“Should it?” The droid finally asked.  
  
Cassian sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t have to. But basically, I’m asking you to help me sabotage the base so that your fellow droids here don’t get used as cannon fodder for the Empire. Interested?” He honestly didn’t know what he was going to do if the droid refused to help him, beyond abandoning his immediate sabotage plans and taking off back for Yavin 4.  
  
To his surprise, the droid cocked his head to the side. “You are an adolescent male who is roughly ten pounds underweight for your height. I would estimate based on the redness and the shadows under your eyes that you’re sleep-deprived and dehydrated. Your odds of successfully completing this task without my assistance is 42.15%; within that percentage is a 32.04% chance of death and a 10.11% of capture.”  
  
Cassian’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Sounds about right.”  
  
“Therefore, it would be irresponsible of me to let you go about it alone.”  
  
Now Cassian’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” The droid was more willing to assist Cassian than he was his fellow droids? Interesting.  
  
“Don’t look so shocked,” The droid clucked with surprisingly human emotion. “Isn’t this what you programmed me to do?”  
  
“Something like that,” Cassian mumbled. “Alright then. I was thinking we could disable the carrier first, if they can’t get off the ground then they can’t-”  
  
“K-2SO.”  
  
Cassian stopped. “What?”  
  
“K-2SO. My designation is K-2SO, and you’ve neglected to program your name into my system. What is it?”  
  
“Uh,” Cassian considered briefly how wise or unwise it would be to give his name to the droid. After a moment, he gave in. “Cassian. Cassian Andor.”  
  
“Cassian,” The droid- K-2SO- repeated. “Excellent. Well, Cassian, I feel obligated to mention that there is a squadron of about twenty Stormtroopers reporting to this hangar in about seventy seconds.”  
  
“What?!”  
  
“We should probably hide.”  
  
“Yeah, no- _Ugh_. Alright, go, go, go,” Cassian ushered K-2SO over to the crates he’d been hiding behind, shaking his head. “And in the future, please tell me that sort of thing _immediately_.”  
  
“Of course, Cassian. Whatever you like.”  
  
Somehow, Cassian suspected that it wouldn’t play out like that.  
  
But he’d dealt with worse.  
  
-End


End file.
